


A Coin

by HelenTheMoon



Series: In Which the World Makes No Sense [1]
Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Headcanon, Nosebleed, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Time Travel, references to gambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 20:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20699054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenTheMoon/pseuds/HelenTheMoon
Summary: Booker wakes up at the beginning of everything. He takes a gamble.





	A Coin

He woke up with a groan, blood dripping from his nose. His head was swimming, filled bursting with information, all in a dizzy haze as if he was drunk. Flashes of light and darkness, clouds and water, lightning and flames, music and blood, smoke and faces… It made no sense. Nor did he care. Only one thing could he register; the most important of all.

The place he was in was familiar in a negative way. Dark and filthy, stinking with tobacco and alcohol. He could not even tell whether it was day or night, he felt like it would be more appropriate if the room was black and white like a picture, but it was not. He absentmindedly recognized it as his office.

Booker tried to stand up. His nose was still dripping blood, and his clothes had been dirtied with it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that a prolonged nosebleed could lead to fainting and it was in general a very bad sign for one’s health, but right now he did not care.

His eyes caught sight of his hands. And he paused. There were no scars. The initials AD were not there.

…What?

That was when he noticed it. Music was coming from the room at the side. His heart skipped a beat. He could not believe it. Was this a dream? Was it real? Could he even tell the difference between reality and dreams at this point? He did not realize it when he started moving; it was as if his body took the decision on its own.

“Anna?”. As he opened the door, he let a desperate hope bloom in his chest. “Anna, is that you?”.

Booker leaned down on the crib. She was here. His daughter… She was here! Booker let out a laugh. He could not believe it! His little girl was here, a baby just like he remembered her, sleeping peacefully like there was nothing wrong in the world. How was this possible? He – he remembered being _drowned_!

Booker felt lightheaded. Whether it was from his happiness, the chaos of memories in his head or the constant nosebleed, he did not know. However he noticed that some blood had dripped on Anna’s binds. Better get himself cleaned up.

After putting a lot of effort in stopping the nosebleed – which required to put his head in an order and that was incredibly hard – and changing his clothes into something more decent, Booker sat next to Anna’s crib thinking about… everything.

Had not Elizabeth _drowned_ him? How was it that he was still alive? Even with the whole jumping through realities thing taken in consideration, his last moments alive should have been the day of the baptism after Wounded Knee. And the current date – October the 8th, 1893 – was FAR later than _that_. He should not exist. Nor should Anna. Or Elizabeth.

Wait; how was that even possible? If he had dies the day of the baptism after Wounded Knee, he should not exist right now, and Anna would have never been born in the first place. Comstock would have never existed – since Booker would have drowned before the choice was made – and because there would be no Anna, there would be no Elizabeth either, and even if there _was_ Anna, Comstock would never come to turn her into Elizabeth. So how could a person who never existed _drown_ someone? It was impossible.

_Like traveling to 1989 and watching New York burning is impossible?_, asked a small voice in his head. But… that had been a vision of the future, right? He _had_ traveled to 1989 through a tear alright, but at first Booker had seen it as a mere dream of a possible future, which had been eliminated. Hopefully.

Perhaps the whole adventure at Columbia had been a vision of the future as well. The absurdness of the situation occurred to him. A vision of the future inside a vision of the future? One which involved flying cities, strange liquids and alternative realities no less? When had his life become so ludicrous?

_Is, has been, will be._

_Right_. No point in asking _when_. But, now that he thought of the Lutece “twins”, perhaps there was a way to get some answers.

Someone knocked the door. Booker immediately looked up, a certainty settling inside him. He _knew_ what would happen. Booker rose from his seat and left the room, closing the door behind him carefully so he would not wake up Anna. And then, he opened the other door.

Robert Lutece. “The girl for the debt, Mr. DeWitt.”.

_We’ll see about that._, thought Booker, scowling at the man and giving him a menacing glare.

He quickly scavenged through his desk, ignoring the male Lutece’s questioning look, and searched for the object in question, the one that would show them the nature of this world’s constants and variables. And after a lot of digging, he found it and presented the male scientist to it. A coin.

_Heads, or Tails?_

It always landed in Heads. Booker felt a wave of dread wash over him at the memory of that blackboard that Robert Lutece was wearing at Columbia. How many marks were at the “Heads” section of the board? How many Bookers had been asked to give the coin a flip and failed to change the result? What if it landed on Heads this time around as well? Would the circle be unbroken or not?

Well, there is only one way to find out…

In front of Robert Lutece’s astonished gaze, Booker flipped the coin, and let it drop on the floor. The coin spinned for a what seemed like forever, and Booker started feeling the familiar thrill of the gambler rising in his chest. Only that right now he was not betting on horses, numbers or money. He was betting on the fabric of reality itself. He was playing with laws that ordinary people could not even imagine. And somehow, that made his even more scared and excited.

The coin landed on Tails.

With a smile, Booker closed the door right in Lutece’s face. It did not matter whether what he had seen was a vision or it had really happened. He would give Anna the life she deserves. He would give Elizabeth a home to return among her travels in the Infinite – he knew that she was still out there.

This time, things would be different.


End file.
